‘Growing Up Underground’

AT AGE SEVENTEEN I was the first art director of Screw, the pioneering underground “sex review” that helped trigger the 1960s sexual revolution. It was cofounded by the outrageous Al Goldstein, who was a trusted friend … When Al and Jim Buckley founded Screw, nothing—not Hugh Hefner’s Playboy or Ralph Guinzburg’s Eros or Barney Rossett’s Evergreen Review—had yet come close to addressing sex with such unvarnished candor and biting wit. Al was an equal-opportunity exploiter of men, women, and art directors, but his raunchy humor raised the bar for porn from socially unredeemable smut to ironic social commentary. Sure, Screw was shocking, offensive, and downright obscene—but, as the motto on its early covers announced, it was “Best in the Field It Created.”

(Princeton Architectural Press; out now.)